Green around the gills: Nader Effect could cost the Dems the election in three states

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WHAT HATH BILL Clinton wrought?

Ten years ago, Clinton won the presidency by running on a heavily Democratic
Leadership Council-inspired platform. Under the auspices of that centrist,
even right-leaning agenda, Democrats embraced the North American Free Trade
Agreement, welfare reform, and, in some cases, the reactionary Defense of
Marriage Act. American liberals' lurch to the center-right triggered an
electoral revolution of sorts - the emergence of a national Green Party. We
all know what happened in 2000 when Green candidate Ralph Nader ran for
president. The big question today is, what's going to happen in 2002?

The Green Party is poised to dramatically alter the political scene in three
states where it is fielding candidates for higher office: Maine, Minnesota,
and Massachusetts. In Maine, publicly financed Green candidate Jonathan
Carter is getting ready to put up a strong run for governor against
Republican Peter Cianchette, Democrat David Baldacci, and Independent John
Michael. In Minnesota, the Green Party has nominated Ed McGaa, a Native
American and veteran, to run against incumbent Democratic senator Paul
Wellstone and his Republican challenger, St. Paul mayor Norman Coleman. And
in Massachusetts, Green Party gubernatorial candidate Jill Stein could rob
the Democrats of victory in a narrowly divided general election. At issue is
the "Nader Effect," whereby the increasingly well-organized Green Party cuts
into Democratic support. The stakes are high. In Minnesota, Wellstone's
defeat would give control of the Senate back to the GOP.

For the Greens, though, success in state elections represents a logical next
step from a national election where their candidate won 2.7 percent of the
vote - still far less than the 19 percent cash-rich independent candidate
Ross Perot garnered in 1992, but enough to determine the election. "The
Greens are going to run headlong, and if that means running against
Democrats, so be it," says Micah Sifry, author of Spoiling for a Fight,
Third-Party Politics in America (Routledge, 2002). "The goal is to build the
party, and the way to build the party is to run candidates."

BUT BUILDING a third party in the United States isn't easy. Our political
system all but ensures that a third party will succeed only by tearing into
one of two major parties. It happened in 2000 on a national scale, and it
might just happen again in 2002 in Minnesota, where Senator Wellstone has
been deadlocked in the polls with his Republican opponent for the last year
and a half. "The stakes are very high in this race," says Jim Farrell, the
communications director for Wellstone's campaign. "This race may decide who
controls the Senate." While Wellstone is known more for his advocacy on the
environment and worker protections, the most important issue to emerge in
this campaign, Farrell says, is judicial and Supreme Court nominations.

Republican control of the Senate will mean a return to the GOP's
stranglehold on appointment of federal judges via control of the Senate
Judiciary Committee. Since the Democrats gained control of the committee
when Vermont senator James Jeffords left the GOP to become an Independent,
they have derailed the nominations of judges like Charles Pickering, a
former federal judge in Mississippi who staunchly opposes Roe v. Wade.
"McGaa's got the ability to cause Wellstone problems," says Minnesota
political consultant Bill Hillsman, who created Wellstone's innovative
television spots in 1990, when he defeated Republican incumbent Rudy
Boschwitz. The award-winning ads depicted Wellstone in Roger and Me fashion
trying to confront his opponent. (Hillsman also created Jesse Ventura's
now-classic 1998 ads depicting the wrestler-cum-gubernatorial candidate as
an action figure.) "McGaa is more progressive than Wellstone on a lot of
things," Hillsman adds. Indeed, the progressive Wellstone has had to go
"more middle of the road," he says, to compete with Coleman for centrist
voters. (Wellstone also hasn't helped himself by breaking a pledge to serve
only two terms and then return to teaching.)

The Minnesota Green Party endorsed McGaa - who had been a Green for only a
couple of months before the May 18 convention - after fierce debate. Nader's
2000 running mate and well-known Minnesota activist Winona LaDuke actually
wrote to each Green delegate, urging him or her not to make an endorsement
in the Senate race. "Paul Wellstone is the closest we have to a Green in the
U.S. Senate; he has been a champion of the vast majority of our issues,"
LaDuke pleaded. Despite her efforts, the Green Party nominated McGaa.
Wellstone supporters are privately hoping that interest in the Minnesota
governor's race - which has no incumbent, thanks to Governor Jesse Ventura's
decision to step down at the end of his term - will take the wind out of
McGaa's sails and save their candidate.

Considerable sentiment exists within
the Green Party in favor of activists shifting attention away from the
Senate race and toward Green Party gubernatorial candidate Ken Pentel, best
known for his environmental activism. Pentel is running against Republican
Tim Pawlenty, Democratic Farmer Labor Party candidate Roger Moe, and
Independence Party candidate Tim Penny. In that race, Pawlenty, Moe, and
Penny - a former Democratic congressman who elected to run this race under
Ventura's party banner - are bunched near the top with around 25 percent,
while Pentel has been solidly polling five percent or better, enough to
guarantee the Greens' major-party status into the next election. If there is
a "spoiler" in the Minnesota gubernatorial race, pulling the election away
from one of the major-party candidates, it will be Penny of the Independence
Party, not Pentel of the Greens.

"If you're a good Green activist, concerned about the Greens maintaining
their five percent and keeping their public financing, you don't have to
vote against Paul Wellstone," says Sarah Janecek, the co-editor of Politics
in Minnesota, an eight-page newsletter published 20 times a year. "You can
vote for Ken Pentel in the governor's race and you can vote for Paul
Wellstone and feel good about it."

The Wellstone campaign seems to be subtly pursuing a strategy of encouraging
Green voters to do just that. Wellstone-campaign spokesman Farrell seems to
be trying to appeal to pragmatists within the Green Party by pointing to
Wellstone's record on energy policy (he helped stop President Bush's attempt
to cut funding for development of renewable energy) and the environment (he
helped draft a conservation-friendly farm bill). "Ken Pentel is well known
within the Green Party. He's probably a good deal more known than Ed McGaa,"
says Farrell, sounding a bit like a campaign strategist for the Greens.

"Pentel's going to be a strong candidate. They get public financing with
this election. They need to get five percent to reach their major-party
status - the trigger for public financing."

A SIMILAR SCENARIO is unfolding in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race,
though the implications don't extend to the national level. Right now, most
of the attention is focused on the Democratic primary, with Treasurer
Shannon O'Brien, Senate president Tom Birmingham, former Watertown state
senator Warren Tolman, and former secretary of labor Robert Reich all vying
for the win. Although the Green Party in Massachusetts bungled its
application for Clean Elections funding by failing to garner the mandatory
6000 $5 to $100 contributions, Green gubernatorial candidate Jill Stein's
campaign is running strong. (Stein attributes the Clean Elections-funding
snafu to "technicalities which we thought were unjust." Under the Clean
Elections Law, candidates must not only take in contributions, but must also
collect detail-intensive cards along with each donation. Stein claims local
town halls arbitrarily rejected the paperwork or, in some cases, wrongly
applied the same strict rules as those guiding nominating-petition
signatures.)

Regardless, current polls suggest that the centrist O'Brien will defeat her
Democratic foes. If that happens, Stein will emerge as the one unabashedly
progressive voice in the general election. At the state Democratic
convention, in Worcester, O'Brien rather courageously linked herself to the
centrist tradition of Bill Clinton, and won the convention's nomination. But
Stein blames rightward-lurching Democratic centrist policies, on both the
national and state levels, for perpetuating many of the problems in
Massachusetts. She maintains that there are stark differences between
herself and O'Brien - not to mention the other three Democratic candidates.
"Shannon O'Brien is the daughter of a political insider, married to a
lobbyist, who is as tied as anybody could be to big money," says Stein. "I
don't think she's going to change the direction of government."

She is even less impressed with Birmingham, of whom she says: "He's running
with an enormous war chest that comes to him as the leader of the Senate. As
big as his war chest is, it's his back-room deals that he brings with him.

He recently proposed this accounting bill that would protect accounting CEOs
in Massachusetts from their accounting decisions." Stein even sees sharp
distinctions between her candidacy and those of Reich and Tolman. "He claims
credit for the Clinton boom, and our slogan on that is 'a boom for whom?'"

Stein says of Reich, who is polling well in Green strongholds like Amherst
and Northampton. "Bob Reich is not only making the deals that other
traditional candidates make to get their political funding. He's tiptoeing
around Tom Finneran, and he's bringing in some $800,000 a year with his
corporate speaking engagements." She similarly dismisses Tolman: ""Warren
unfortunately comes with the party of Tom Finneran."

Although it's quite possible that Republican gubernatorial candidate Mitt
Romney could win the general election if a few percentage points' worth of
Democrats vote for Stein in November, the Green candidate isn't concerned.
"The Democrats have become the party of the privileged and elite who fund
their campaigns," she says. "They've been protecting the interest of their
wealthy sponsors and not serving the interest of Massachusetts."

Obviously, the Democratic candidates don't see it that way. "There is a
tremendous distinction between Shannon and Mitt Romney," says Adrian Durban,
a spokesman for O'Brien. "We're confident that anyone who is committed to
progressive issues like protecting a woman's right to choose, providing
health care to those most in need, protecting resources for our public
schools, and creating more affordable housing will vote for Shannon because
she can beat Mitt Romney." Paul Wingle, a spokesman for Birmingham, points
to the Senate president's legislative achievements, such as increasing the
minimum wage, the granting of health insurance to all Bay State children
(Stein says it's not enough), and the environment as ample evidence of the
differences between Birmingham and the GOP.

Reich campaign manager Mark Longabaugh scoffs at Stein's assertions. But he
allows that only a Reich victory in September will prevent Democrat
progressives from voting for Stein in November. "Reich speaks to the issues
and values these Green voters care about," he says. Tolman spokeswoman Karen
Grant points out that Tolman has "taken on" Finneran on "important issues"
such as Clean Elections. "Warren, in fact, says the road to reform on Beacon
Hill goes through Tom Finneran, and will continue to lead the charge against
things he that he believes wrong with Beacon Hill today," she says.

Despite Tolman's campaign for reform, Reich probably is the Democratic
candidate best able to deal with both Stein and Romney in a general
election. Whether he wins or loses in September, says Democratic Party
spokeswoman Jane Lane, "the Democratic Party is really going to have to rely
on Reich to help bring [Green Party voters] into the Democratic fold." Of
course, Stein takes a different view. "We're here ready and waiting with
open arms," she says of progressive Democrats. "They will find a home within
our campaign, and I think they may even be more comfortable here working for
real change."

Stein adds that if the Democratic Party were truly worried about the spoiler
scenario, it could have dealt with the issue legislatively by enacting
instant-run-off voting, known by the acronym IRV to political junkies. In
IRV, voters rank their candidates. If their first choice loses, then their
vote automatically goes to their second choice. So if a voter ranked the
Green Party first and the Democrats second and Stein lost, then those votes
would be counted for the Democrats. This system eliminates plurality votes
and guarantees that the winner receives more than 50 percent of votes.

Cambridge already uses an IRV variant in its city-council elections, and the
system has been proposed - but gone nowhere - on Beacon Hill.

Things aren't so critical in Maine, where the Democrats have fielded a
strong candidate in the gubernatorial race. Still, voters have seen the
Greens and Democrats square off against one another. Jonathan Carter, a
Green candidate eligible for up to $900,000 in Clean Elections money, has
had to overcome two legal challenges by Democrats to his publicly financed
candidacy. But what is blunting the Nader Effect in Maine may be the plain
popularity of Democratic candidate John Baldacci, a four-term congressman
who was one of the few freshman Democrats elected during the "Republican
Revolution" of 1994.

"Obviously we take every candidate seriously, including Jonathan Carter,"
says Christy Setzer, the communications director for the Maine Democratic
Party. But the party is, as Setzer puts it, "extremely confident" about
Baldacci. And with good reason: a recent Portland Press Herald poll showed
Baldacci with the support of 48 percent of voters, his Republican opponent
at 14 percent, and Carter at two percent. Even if Carter were to garner five
percent of the vote, Baldacci would still win handily. Carter, for his part,
puts his support at around 10 percent, saying, "I can get enough support to
win this thing. I just need to get my message out."

Still, even if Carter fails to catch on to the degree he hopes, Maine could
end up being the rare case where the Greens get what they need - a
substantial chunk of the vote - and the Democratic candidate, through the
force of his own personality, gets elected. If so, the Greens, through a
practical strategy, will have managed to build for the future and remain in
play for the next election cycle.

THE NADER EFFECT has clearly had an impact on national politics. Ruth
Conniff of the Progressive has written about how Clinton-campaign veterans
James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Robert Shrum have founded the
Democracy Corps, which is pushing the party away from the centrist
Democratic Leadership Council. Meanwhile, former vice-president Al Gore
skipped the July 29 and 30 DLC "conversation" in New York, which all the
other 2004 presidential hopefuls viewed as a must-attend. And on August 4,
Gore penned an op-ed for the New York Times defending his populist ("the
people versus the powerful") stance during the 2000 campaign - a stance that
many politicos believe was a bad strategy.

It should be clear now that while 2000 may have been Nader's nadir, as some
have said, it was no such thing for the Green Party. "The mistake the
Democrats are making about the Greens is that they're acting like they're
going to disappear," says Sifry. "Instead of continuing to move to the right
... the Democrats should move left in a sincere way." With corporate
scandals and anti-Wall Street anger in vogue, that just may happen. Where it
will lead us is less clear.

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